


Give Her Life

by miilky



Series: welcome to the family way [8]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Adoption, F/M, Freeform, Interspecies Adoption, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-03 03:11:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6594325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miilky/pseuds/miilky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“A mother gives you a life, a mother-in-law gives you her life.”<br/>--Amit Kalantri</p><p>Stories of motherhood, romance, and happiness that forge unbreakable bonds. Nick and Judy meet their future mother-in-laws and more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tea Time

**Author's Note:**

> Mrs. Wilde meets the rabbit responsible for helping her son find the pick lock to the door he locked twenty four years ago. Nick pretends he could care less, and Judy's in awe of her future mother-in-law, not that she knows this yet.

**_"_** _A mother gives you life, a mother-in-law gives you her life."  
_      -Amit Kalantri

“Hello, Mrs. Wilde,” some would say her smile is too cheerful, too pleasant, too undeniably nice, and she’s nervous, this much I can tell so her presence doesn’t leave me uneasy. There’s nothing wrong with that. If she’s polite, she thinks, I cannot dislike her, and I think, well, isn’t she a polite little rabbit. She cannot dislike me. But you see, it’s impossible to dislike this little rabbit. She’s everything my Nick has said about her.

Which is what I say next,” Is the Judy Hopps you can’t stop talking about?” Moms know an embarrassing line when they think it, and this isn’t any different from when he and his prom date left my home fourteen years ago. A savannah cat, I believe. Nick has an odd taste in women, which isn’t necessarily bad I might add. So the point is-it’s my job as a mother to embarrass my son from time to time, and since he’s waited as long as he has I think an embarrassing mom moment is overdue. Also, providing uncomfortable truth is a part of the job description as well, especially when the person of interest is in hearing range.

Nick is readable, or it’s my maternal instincts coming into play. He’s mentioned her no more than fifteen times in phone calls and visits, but those fifteen times are relevant. _“She’s a good cop, Mom, the best in the force,”_ or the half-thought mention he flies at me without thinking of it at all, _“Judy’s coming over to study the exam,”_ or her personal favorite-something I will never ever tell him, _“Behind you, it’s strange, I don’t think I’ve ever had a personal cheerleader. But she isn’t a cheerleader more as she’s like a drill sergeant. Can it be interchangeable?”_

His tail shoots upright as if struck by lightning. If I stare hard enough I can see sparks fly off the tips of his fur, but I don’t. “Now, now is this a carrot cake?” I return my attention to her, and there’s a flush touch to her cheeks. She holds the spectacular design cake in her hands, and really, it’s a treat. White icing bombards it and appears to glisten in the light, and miniature carrots are circled on the cake, cutesy and bobbing as Judy offers it to me, “Don’t tell me you spent all this time preparing it for me!”

Judy shakes her head with a laugh, and carefully puts it into my hands, “I wish! I was never good with cooking, only breakfast meals. A friend of mine, Gideon Grey, back home made it for him. He’s really good at this kind of thing.” _Gideon Grey._ Nick rolls his eyes and shoves his hands into his pants, and he looks to the side, pretending the cake was actually baked by Judy instead of this Gideon Grey person. I make a mental note and remove the plastic top, inhaling the carrot spiced dessert. It’s absolutely lovely, and thanking her, I go the kitchen where the cake slicer is somewhere in one of those sliding drawers.

_“Can I pay you $25.00 to forget everything you heard?”  
“Nope!”_

It’s funny. Love is a fickle mistress, and jumps from one person to the next. The cake slicer is under the sink. I don’t know how it got there. Dawn dish washing detergent and a handy scrubber cleans its off, and as faucet water rushes on it, I can see my reflection mixed in early afternoon sunlight. Wiping it with a nearby paper towel, the spiced aroma tickle my nostrils, and calculating which part I want first, one with the iced carrot or one without, I decide to go without. I have had too many poor experiences with the beautifully designed icing flower, or icing baby for baby showers, or icing anything.

“Mrs. Wilde?” She stands behind me with the same bright, cheery, polite smile, and it’s less nervous this time. My comment has softened it, and this is good. Just as planned, “Can I help?”

Her voice is small, sweet, calm, and it has an easy going nature that isn’t demonstrated in her casual but matching outfit, “Judy, you have done enough. You’ve given me this beautiful cake, and now, it’s my time to treat you.”

Chuckling, she rubs her arm and twists her hips to the side, “Nick’s sulking. It was no good staying there with a sulking Nick, so I thought I could help you.” Of course he’s sulking now. He can’t pay her off to forget what she heard I said, and I meant for her to hear what I said. I wouldn’t have said it otherwise. Speak with purpose I always say.

“I did plan to make some tea. There are some packets in the upper right cabinet, right near the wall, if you don’t mind-,”

“Yes, ma’am!”

This little rabbit is talented. She climbs up on the counter, despite my warning, and manages to find the tea packets I reserve for special occasions. Nick arrived with her a whole day earlier than scheduled, and smacking him silly was my first reaction. But that would have embarrassed him even more. I have standards. She asks me is fine if she starts the tea herself. It’s the least she can do for a hostess as kind as myself, and where I would have scoffed, laughed, poked fun at her, I knew she was sincere. Judy Hopps does everything sincerely it appears, and it isn’t in her nature to be willfully insincere to people she likes or cares for. Not intentionally, I believe. She’s a country rabbit, and my impression tells me they may not always know what they’re doing until it’s finished. That can be said the same for a lot of people I know too.

“It shouldn’t take long for the water to heat,” she turns the heat on low, and I cut the slices evenly, placing one a saucer thoughtfully and with patience, “Nick should be here. He’s your host too. I’ll never understand that boy.”

“I think you understand him better than anyone,” she says.

“Except, maybe you,” I answer, and it takes me five seconds to realize what I’ve said. I raise my head to stare into her wide eyes, upright ears, and the way she appears to be taken aback by thoughtless but entirely accurate statement, “I don’t mean that in a bad way, dear. It’s true. Boys are boys, and they can’t tell their mothers everything.”

“Why would I be mad?” She lowers the heat and takes the kettle off the stove using one of the oven mittens I gave her, “I…you’ve welcome me into your home, and Nick’s my best friend. The first real friend I’ve ever had, and I have friends just not like him.”

This might take longer than I anticipated. “I see, people come and go, but friendship is a mighty curious thing.” I can’t take my eyes off the even cake slices. I am surprised with my ability to cut evenly spaced and sized cake slices, “People are mighty curious too, very strange. Half of the time I don’t know what they’re saying-maybe, because half of the people in this complex speak Spanish.”

“Really?”

“Yes, my neighbors, sweet people, are bilingual, and I get so jealous sometimes!” My laughter is off beat, “But that’s what makes it beautiful, so many different species live here now when it used to be a strictly fox, predator complex, and what I’m saying is that I’m glad Nick’s met you.” Not someone like you, not someone of your kind, but you-you specifically. Nick’s a good person with a good heart. I won’t lie for him. I know he’s done things he isn’t proud, and things he knows I wouldn’t be proud of.”

A mother knows what kind of children she has raised, and she knows what kind of adults they have grown into. His secrets are his to keep, and he keeps them to maintain the image he wants her to see. Krista Marian Wilde isn’t blind. She grew up on the same streets, faced the same trials, had the same temptations, but her son is different, brighter and more clever than she could ever be. He feels so tenderly, she thinks, and stares into Judy’s eyes to hear the lingering echo in her small kitchen.

“He’d never admit,” betraying wetness frizzles my fur, and slowly, I walk to her, closing the distance, “he feels a lot for a lot of things, and is so afraid of showing it. He has been for a long time.”

Judy’s speechless. This confession is an unplanned feature, and she doesn’t know what to do with it. She has planned for a casual visit, the surveying and judging stare of a protective mother, and it makes me want to embrace her all the more. It’s what I do. She isn’t resistance as my arms carefully fold around her, and I hear her heartbeat on my stomach, the quick thump-thumping of surprise and delight. “Thank you, thank you for showing Nick what he truly is inside, thank you,” she melts in my heart, giving me thanks for some reason. I can’t say why she’s thanking me, but she is in my arms.

We last for one minute and forty-five seconds, and fearing the tea will cool before we can return to the living room, she takes hold of it with the mitten in hand. I find the rarely used tea set, and she starts to pour the kettle into each cup, careful of its remaining heat and liquid. “Now, now, don’t you worry about bringing it out,” I say and fuss over her paws. She’s an insistent little rabbit, and she concedes only when I call, “Nicholas Piberius Wilde, get in here right here young man.”

Judy covers her mouth with her paw, and Nicholas enters with a tight grimace on his face. He will not say anything until she’s out of range, and I fuss her out, “You are our guest. Now, Nicholas will serve the tea _you_ made.”

“She’s more stubborn than you, Carrots,” he jabs his thumb in the living room’s direction, “we’ll be there soon.” She senses an incoming conversation between mother and son, and knowing her absence will be helpful, disappears into the living room where I can hear her bottom meet the plastic covering my furniture. Nicholas leans down to the lower cabinet and retrieves a tray I purchases fifteen years ago at the flea market, and gives me a light hearted glare as he places each tea saucer in position.

“She’s nice.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes she’s too nice.”

“Is she?” I wait for him to say something. He’ll give me something if I use the right bait, “Is she in some kind of trouble?”

The idea of it chills him. His eyes fall in distant places, and he looks at strangely, concerned over the possibility, and his fingers go through his fur in a rush of agitation, “What? No, no, she isn’t in trouble. She’s…ugh, she’s a _rabbit_.” Where I used to hear disgust and bitterness there’s frustration and affection. Separate and connected, one does not go without the other, and there’s more to this complaint than I know. I slide the cake saucers on the tray and stare at him, the little boy now a head taller than I am.

“Nick, she’s very nice.”

“She’s wonderful, Mom.”

“Should I say that too?”

He cocks his head to the side and gives me the same _Oh you would love too_ look that was frequent during his rebellious, teenage period, “I have tea and cake you serve.” He walks ahead with his muzzle raised high and arms pushed forward, strong, the way I taught him when he was still a kit. A little kit clinging to my skirts and following me every which way I went. He’s grown up too fast, and I love it.

“A woman loves a man who knows how to serve and does it gladly.” His shoulders stick right up, and his tail bristles, fluffing out in flustered excitement. He’s going to say something, I can feel it, but Judy says something in the living room. His shoulders fall downwards, relaxing. He gives me one side-glance, a hilariously tested glance, and goes to meet her with the tray in his hands.

He shouldn’t keep a lady waiting. He was raised better than that. By the looks of it, hopefully, I won’t have to wait much longer for a grandkit. A mother's patience can stretch to indefinite lengths, and everyone has their limits.  


	2. A Thumping Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bonnie Hopps comes to terms with her name, her present, and her daughter's future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonnie Hopps wasn't easy to write, but she was fun. She was fun to write, and so was, Stu. To every writer who has written/has attempted to write in second person (especially reader inserts), you guys are heroes. Real heroes. I don't know how you do it.

Your parents name you Bonnie Marie Thumper in honor of a great-great-great grandmother and an equally great aunt plus two neither of them have met. Your name is sensible in rabbit fashion, and there is nothing more to be said about it except its easy texture. It rings easy off the tongue, and no one ever gets confused. It doesn’t surprise you there are more Bonnies in Bunny Burrow, more than anyone is willing to count, and you accept your name is one of a million in a tightly knit, sometimes overcrowded space.

Bonnie means pretty. You find this out in seventh grade. You have accepted there will be a lot more Bonnies in the world, but at least you can know what it means. You find a dictionary of names, and you go through its table of contents. And with a dusty sigh you scroll down the list until you find it squeezed under Beula and Brittney. It’s an old, out of date name, but perfectly suits your rabbit heritage. You understand why your parents chose the name although its meaning was of no important to them aside from distant relatives that died years before their time.

When it came for you to marry and to start a family you did the same. Your first litter counts fourteen, and you come up with practical, unimaginative names. Stu tosses the baby name book in dismay, unable to come to a concrete decision, and thoughtfully, you smile at him and pick through, your stomach swollen and three times larger than the rest of your rabbit. It seems right as rain the picking and choosing, and you smile despite the inevitable exhaustion and pain that comes later as you lie on the hospital bed, fourteen nursery beds surrounding you-soft mewing echoing in your ears.

“Judy, Frank, William, Trudy, Holly, Lydia, Marshall,” you breathe and let your body rest before the next line of names come to you in systematic order, “Steven, Wendy, Spencer, Evan, Polly, Jordan, and Kyle.” You don’t realize what your choosing has done. Their names are practical and reasonable, and roll off the tongue easily. It’d be crude and awfully cruel to give your children hard to pronounce names, names very few would understand, and you don’t understand the error you have made in not defining those names much later, when you Muzzletime your eldest.

“Good work on that case, Judy, your dad and I are so proud of you,” you push Stu’s face to the side. He’s weeping over one thing or another, and Judy sighs, the same kind of happy sigh she uses when she’s exhausted but relieved. There are no forced smiles, too much teeth and too much strain. You can’t shake off she’s trying to-what’s the word, tell you something she doesn’t want you to necessarily know. And yes, naturally, it hurts. You bite your bottom lip, worried, and you concede to silence.

Judy does the work for you. “Uh…Mom, Dad?” Her nose twitches, and she straightens, “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

 _Oh,_ your back straightens, and you’ve told yourself this two hundred and seventy-five times that it’s going to come. You didn’t think it’d come so soon, and really, your mind is trying to brace itself for the inevitable truth that hung precariously between you and your husband. You trust Judy’s judgment. You trust Judy, and you wait in silence after complying, _“Hon, we’ve been waiting weeks for this.”_ She brightens and calls to someone offscreen, and there’s a brief debate.

 _“You promised!”_  
_“Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d actually do it. Today.”_  
_“I was half-joking. Half-joke, half-serious, now come.”_

His obedience stuns you, and his appearance doesn’t leave your speechless. Not in the way you anticipated. He’s on the screen, perfectly clear, dressed in a faded, almost gaudy Hawaiian blouse. His teeth are sharp, but their sharpness is passed over by his awkward friendliness. His nervousness is easy to detect despite his polite coolness, and this realization leaves you humbled, if not a little more forthcoming than you would have been. Stu’s even better to yours and her shock, and nearly pushes you aside in his excitement, asking him if he’s ever had a good, old-fashioned tripe layered blueberry pie. He hasn’t, and Stu vows to remedy that.

The conversation is brief. They discuss their recent case was not an easy one but was well managed and performed, and no more details are given. He mentions a mother and the farmer’s market she always goes to at the end of the month. Yes, farmer’s markets exist in the city, go figure, and yes, the prices are actually reasonable when you learn how to haggle well enough. He disappears swiftly, saying his goodbyes and that he’ll keep in touch, and the three of them are left staring at each other.

“He’s a charmer,” Stu says lamely.

“He’s really nice, Dad.”

“Are you coming for Carrot Days?”

You didn’t mean to ask the question. It entered as an unprecedented event you and your husband knew she would attend, or maybe not attend, her job was important. But the second the question slips out, something burns in Judy’s eyes, and you know what you’ve done, something you weren’t sure you wanted to do in the first place. Stu, sensing what is in development, pushes forward where you stand unyielding, “Bring Nick along, the more the merrier.”

“Why did you do that?” The phone goes black, and you can’t keep the glare out of your voice, “Invite him?”

Stu scratches his arm, and sighs, “You weren’t going to, and it’s about time we’ve met this fella. Judy’s taken with him.”

"Taken with him?” You take the phone into your hand and round to your dressing table, thoughtful, “She is not taken with him. She isn’t taken with anyone.”

“What about Gideon?”

“It’s different.”

“I reckon a lot of things are different now, and we’re just going to have to get used to it.” An underlying threat Stu is physically incapable of delivering goes down your spine, and you breathe, knowing what you have to do and what you’re going to do.

In the month from then and now, you spend it managing. “Judy’s bringing her friend,” you say without speaking the full truth, and you don’t feel an ounce of guilt. You command Holly, who’s on summer vacation, to inform everyone that all fox repellent, fox tasers, anything fox-related that can do harm is to be removed by time Judy and her friend arrives. Holly gives you a rather pointed stare and shrugs indifferently, and she passes the command obediently, spreading it like wildfire from rabbit to rabbit, young and old.

“What are you doing, Mom?”

You don’t want to tell her immediately. It’s a quiet shame you keep tuck in the attic, and the book is pulled out delicately, knowing the pages have waned over the years. Ink spots stain the cover page, and you pick through partially eligible cursive script, besmirched over the years. You gave your children practical, sensible names. The sort of name a doe would give her kit, and yet, as you flip through the pages, identify the red marker stickers; you realize you had become your mother and father, eager and reckless. _“She will be praised,”_ you assumed the meaning would be different, more bunny like, and it clicks then, as you sit crouched on the attic floor that you had assumed erroneously.

She will be praised for bigger things than yourself. Grander things than you and your husband and your parents could have ever imagined.

Nick Wilde charms everyone in his vicinity. There’s an innate sweetness about him, underneath his slight arrogance, and his calmness around the children, giving them permission to tug and hug his tail, delights you. His paws are like sandpaper, scratchy and soft, but you pretend not to feel the inner roughness, focusing on the details of his eyes and easy tip of his lips. Stu delights in him. This is the strangest thing. He takes the boy by the arm leaving, she and Judy alone, and shows him to the majority of the siblings.

“You got notes?”

“Sir?”

“Your phone.” He pulls his out, “After the twenty-seventh litter, things start to get fuzzy. I love my children, all of them, but a rabbit needs his help.”

You stand next to your oldest, no longer a baby or a child, an adult with responsibilities of her own-a life separate from yours. Afternoon sunlight stings and shows the tired lines under her eyes, and scars that weren’t present the morning she left, tackling you in one, last embrace. Guilt strapped itself on your heart as you remembered praying for her to be assigned to meter maid duty, “She isn’t a real cop,” and what trouble that must’ve brought her, the disappointment and frustration. You can’t stop looking at her now. Yes, the tired lines and scars are fur rising, but there’s easiness to her shape and form that wasn’t there before. She’s restlessly content, and pleased with herself, at ease with who and what she is.

Your gaze follows hers because how can it not? She’s more of a leader than you’ve ever been, but you see in her line of direction the cause of this content. The little ones have gotten to him. His laughter mingles with theirs, and he topples backwards with one dozen little bunnies on him.

“They’ve really taken to him.”

“He’s really good with kids, Mom.” Judy sighs, and it’s that kind of sigh you remember, making you stare at your daughter critically, “Sounds like good husband material to me.”

Judy curls as if burned, “Mom! We’re just friends.” Even then it sounds like a weak excuse to maintain the status quo, and you start to wonder what kind of babies they’ll have-if it’s biologically possible. Something tells you it isn’t.

But that’s never stopped Judy before.

“You can put them there, Nick.” His name is easy to say and spell, and somehow, it sounds mangled on your tongue. You don’t have a right to say his name, but you do so as easily as you breathe air. He carries five plastic tubs of leftover meals, and he doesn’t strain pressing them on the kitchen counter. The others are in the center living room, the main living room while more have returned to their burrows, slinking in with swollen stomachs and incoming hangovers.

He’s a good listener. Fox ears are perceptible to most sounds, but he sits, stares, and listens. She watched them talk as Judy introduced them to other family members; siblings and cousins clinging to him like glue.

“Is there anything else you need me to do?”

He wants to leave, and you give him the look. He is everything you expected him to be and everything you didn’t. He’s a charmer, smug, an air of aloofness that catches you off guard, but suddenly, he becomes humble, warm, funny, and empathizes with people without regard to his person. Stu’s father grasped his hand and shook it as heartily as a ninety two year old man could.

This is where you hug him. This is where you tell him how happy you are that Judy has a good friend, relieved someone’s looking out for her where you can’t, but it’s too soon. It’s too raw, and instead you sigh and shrug your shoulders, giving him your brightest and most sincere smile.

“You’ve done more than enough,” you pat his shoulder comfortably as you walk to the sink, and the water turns on, rushing with a loud creak, “and she’s waiting for you out there, probably need you to save her from Holly. Girl knows how to talk.”

In the window you see his reflection. He’s more stunned than anything else, and his face freezes in thought before thawing with a small smile of his own. He nods as he turns away, giving her a quick nod, “Will do, Mrs. Hopps. Now, which one is Holly again?”

“Trust me, you’ll hear her. Kind of a squeaky voice, nasally.”

“Do you think they’re having sex?”

“Bonnie.” Stu groans and smacks her with his stitched pillow, “Not yet, but it’s getting there.”

Your laugh and turn on your side, thoughtful, “You think we’ll be getting more grandchildren anytime soon?”

“With their work schedules?” Stu shrugs, and he pulls the bedsheets up to his chin, “No, but…can they? If they can’t, they’ll find a way. She always does.”

“She does. It’s scary actually.” You fall into your husband’s embrace, and your breathing is much easier, softer than it usually is, “He’s a good man, Stu. I don’t think she can do better.”

Stu tightens around her, “Oh, she can, we all can, but it’s about call and demands. He jumped at the call.”

You can’t disagree with Stu, but you’re too tired to tell him that Judy jumped too, just to keep up with him.

_“Do you think they can hear us?”_  
_“Carrots, they can, and they don’t care.”_  
_“Do you know how that sounds?"_  
_"...Yes, yes, I do. Lets go to sleep instead."_  
_"Smart fox."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For approximately three weeks I am free to do what I want with my non-work time. Finals are done and over with, and summer school starts in June. 
> 
> Thumper comes straight out of Bambi. I am not ashamed to admit this. Why? I suck at making animal-pun names and other things. 
> 
> It was difficult to write Bonnie's story compared to Mrs. Wilde's. It's one thing to work with your natural predator-Gideon, and now, this natural predator is intimately involved in your daughter's life (platonic and romantic). Some time has passed since Mrs. Wilde's meeting, and they are now, unofficially, a couple.
> 
> Bonnie doesn't hug Nick, yet. But she's glad Judy has him. And she really wants more grandkits. 
> 
> Who's next? You shouldn't underestimate Judy. She has something to prove and someone to protect.

**Author's Note:**

> This installment was inspired by the amazing kisu-no-hi comic found here; http://kisu-no-hi.tumblr.com/post/141479704039. If you haven't seen her art, you should. It's fantastic.
> 
> Headcanon Mrs. Wilde's name as Krista Marian. It's a reference to Maid Marian from Disney's Robin Hood. It's the film that inspired Zootopia, and I headcanon Nick's a direct descendant of Robin Hood. Up next is Bonnie Hopps!


End file.
